


Your Body Is My Coffin

by GoddessOfGanon



Category: Legend of Zelda
Genre: F/M, ganzel, zelgan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4428953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoddessOfGanon/pseuds/GoddessOfGanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the divide between Hyrule and the Gerudo, the bearers of Wisdom and Power sleep peacefully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Body Is My Coffin

_“Are you not cold?”  
_

The moonlight reflected in the ebony of the princess’s pupil, enhanced by the light sheen of an emotion she fought not to let spill over lash. Zelda blinked away the tears and turned away from the window, from the dark and starless night, to the man reclined against her bed. Ganondorf. He appeared comfortable enough. His mane had come unbound in their earlier activity, when she had raked her fingers through his hair, knocking the gold ornamentation threaded into his mane onto the silken sheets beneath them. He hadn’t noticed, purposefully engaged with finding the exact spot on her clavicle that had left her so unbound the night before.

“Cold?” He repeated after a moment’s pause. He was near sleep, but refused to let his eyes fall shut before hers. He had been waiting for her to return to bed so they could wrap themselves in each other and forget the divide between their countries, the war. The Hero, who couldn’t be kept at bay for much longer. _  
_

“It is not like the desert here.” She explained, like she felt she had to, smoothing down the front of her night shift. “This is not a climate as you are used to. I wondered if you grow cold when you stay here. And night is our only time to be together, you know.”

Shifting against the headboard, pulling a tasseled pillow into his lap, Ganondorf titled his chin back and regarded her, a stark silhouette in the moonlight that poured in from the latticed window. She looked like she was coming from a dream, her chestnut hair spilling down her back, her shift hanging loosely on the figure that had waned in the past months of choosing strategy meetings over meals. “You forget the desert grows cold at night.” His words were nearly eclipsed as she drew the window closed with a firm twist to the lock. A breeze blew against her lips, which were pressed thin in a moment’s frustration.

“I did not forget. I have never been to the Gerudo desert. The sate of affairs between our nations cannot allow that.”

“Yet here I am.” He replied flatly, leaning forward. Here in her kingdom. Here in her castle. Here in her bed.

“Zelda, come to bed.”

As she approached the canopy, he moved the pillow from his lap to the spot where she would lay on the small of her back, the spot that he knew ached the most from spending hours hunched over tactician’s maps. Even the man who could ground coal into dust could not erase the tension that remained there, after hours of pressing his thumbs into each raised notch of her spine, his calloused hands running over the notch of her ribs and the swell of her breasts. He had vocalized before that her time would be better spent in the armory, exercising instead of strategizing, and it would do to ease the tightness in her back. She heard every word he had spoken, though that didn’t stop her from stepping out of her gown and laying face down on her bed once he had followed her to her chambers after they shared supper, a silent invitation- a wordless plea- to give her some respite, some peace in the twilight hours they had to be alone. He always obliged, though despite the tenderness of his touch, he was still Ganon. He was still a man of hate. And he hated to see her hurt. He hated that what was hurting her lately were the incoming troops from the desert that failed to yield despite his commands.

“Do you truly believe that inclement weather would be enough to keep me from you?” He asked with a smirk, unrelenting on his self assigned task to keep her from falling asleep with a frown. He was angry, and that drove him. He was angry they had been born into warring nations, and he was angry at the weight that had been placed on the shoulders of the only person he had in the world. 

The princess leaned into the hand that swept across her cheek, raising her own to hold it there. “You spoil me so. Crossing the desert to spend the night with me.”

“Would I could, I’d steal the sun so the nights we spend together would be eternal.” He had to bite back any vehemence from creeping into his tone, he was determined to speak lightly, masking his hatred for the circumstances they lived in.

“What did I ever do to deserve such adoration?” She asked as she slid beneath silken sheets, still holding his hand above her pillow. He mirrored her position, his eyes never leaving hers. 

“You stole something from me that I have no intention of asking you to return.” And there it was. Her smile. He’d compare it to the sun if he didn’t loathe that star so. Content now, and enervated, he drew her to him in a position to rest. “I go where you go.” He breathed, tucking her head beneath his chin.

The wind battered the lattice outside, though they slept soundly. 

* * *

_The princess of Hyrule was no soothsayer. But there are days that one can see coming years before the morning dawns._ For Zelda, this was one of them. The one that mattered.

Ash fell from the sky like snow. It dusted the glowing Triforce on her right hand as she overlooked the flames taking the west wing of her castle from her balcony, her knuckles white from her iron grip on the railing.

Peace could not be negated between Hyrule and the Gerudo. And at the forefront of the war stood a boy garbed in green, who couldn’t begin to comprehend how Power could stake his share of the Triforce on something, on someone, who could offer him nothing more than a crumbling kingdom. The bobbing blue fairy over his shoulder couldn’t explain what couldn’t be seen, but in the dwindling moments before dawn when Power and Wisdom converged in secret.

Zelda heard the doors to her balcony open behind her. Ganondorf had righted his crown but not donned his armor. He saw not the horizon that she did. He waved a gust of ash from in front of his face, feeling that he had stepped into a dream rather than just waking from one. There on the balcony, surrounded by swirling snow- no, ash- all white, all ethereal, down to the princess that stood only in her shift as towers collapsed in the fields beyond her.

The princess, the visage, held out her hand to him. “Kiss me.”

“Not goodbye,” He warned, before doing exactly that. Taking her by the arms, he did what they had never dared do in daylight, an exchange of passion that had never before left the shade of the princess’s chambers. A tangle of arms and legs and souls, drawing sweat that dissolved the ash that landed on their foreheads.

Zelda sighed as their lips parted and they breathed the same air. And when she caught a glint of green and gold over his shoulder, she summoned the strength of a goddess to press herself against him, so tightly that not a flake of ash could pass between them. She didn’t waver, as the arrow did when it flew through the clouded air. She didn’t shudder, as he did, didn’t draw away in the height of shock and pain. 

The nock of the arrow was buried in the center of his spine, leaving the head just from breaking the skin over where his hands held her around her waist. The Hero’s aim had been kind enough not to pierce their hearts. It was the look shared between them that did that. In that moment, his anger boiled over, not for what was done to him, but that she had made herself a part of it.

In a dying twitch, the princess’s face broke into a smile. “I go where you go.”

The flames wouldn’t reach them, consume them, until after the sun had set. Then, and only then, would they be granted the eternal night they had so ethereally longed for. 


End file.
